Monthly Archive: March 2018

Once upon a time, long ago, there was a country where factories hummed, pipelines gurgled, and newspapers flourished. Yes, my son, newspapers flourished, it was that long ago. But then something called the Internet arrived. Everyone wanted to play Candy Crush and take selfies. No one wanted to read exclusives anymore. Why not just look at an aggregator that steals stories from hither and from yon? Poster Boy and Thor Moon were two among the downtrodden in the business despite having dozens of different outlets. Trouble was, most titles were doing poorly. Readership, ads, everything had gone blooey. So Poster Boy and Thor Moon came up with a...

In a world where most countries are clamping down on migrants or kicking foreigners out, I’m happy to live in Canada, a land that takes all comers. Economically, there are good reasons; we get workers who pay into the Canada Pension Plan so it doesn’t go bust. Morally, there are better reasons; who are we to keep anyone out? We’re all immigrants here. My father came with his family when he was three. On my mother’s side, I’m fifth generation Canadian. These days, Toronto is certainly changed from the burg I visited as a boy to see my grandparents. Today, more...

Now that all legal challenges have been abandoned, Doug Ford is officially leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario. I can’t think of a worse outcome. When his brother Rob was mayor of Toronto, Doug was supposedly the brains of the pair, which wasn’t saying much. To my mind, Doug Ford doesn’t deserve to be leader. Should someone be allowed to become leader when previously he wasn’t even running to be a member of the legislature? Still, the election of Ford puts Ontario in lockstep with other jurisdictions where populism triumphs over ideas and ideals. That’s what’s sweeping the western world...

John McNeil was one of the very few senior Canadian business executives with a world view. During the last few decades of the twentieth century, most of our big-league CEOs were born in small-town Canada. They’d find their way to Vancouver, Toronto, or Montreal, and then slog their way to the top. Not McNeil, who died February 26, at eighty-four. The former chairman and CEO of the Sun Life Assurance Co. of Canada had grown up and lived in England, Africa and Scotland before emigrating to Canada. For McNeil, that broadband heritage was both a strength and a weakness. Because he was so strong-willed,...